


Family Instincts

by NeutrinoClover



Series: Family [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Agoraphobia, Barret is a Sweetheart, Gen, In deep denial over who sephiroth is, Parent-Child Relationship, Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII) Needs A Hug, Sephiroth's (Compilation of FFVII) Terrible Childhood, Young Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII), it's all ok in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27463849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeutrinoClover/pseuds/NeutrinoClover
Summary: Barret has taken the child he found at the Northern Crater back home. But he doesn't want to believe that the seven year old might actually be who he seems to be. After all, Sephiroth was a monster. And this is just a kid - they can't be the same person.Particularly not when the kid in question seems more at home in a lab than a home and acts like the sky is something unknown and terrifying.
Relationships: Sephiroth & Barret Wallace
Series: Family [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2006614
Comments: 4
Kudos: 81





	Family Instincts

**Author's Note:**

> I know I promised a followup ages ago. Better late than never, right?
> 
> This will probably make a lot more sense if you read Paternal Instincts first, though I bet you can figure it out if you don't. Effectively, postgame Barret found a child version of Sephiroth freezing to death near the Northern Crater and rescued him.

Barret hoped this worked. Because their plan rubbed him the wrong way in every direction. It meant working with Shinra, cooperating with the very same department that had so damaged Cloud and was indirectly responsible for the apocalypse, working with Shinra, lying to a child, working with  _ Shinra, _ revealing information that would be best kept quiet to people who needed to know even less than he could trust them, and did he mention who they were working with?

Well. Belaboring the point didn’t make it any less valid, and it was a  _ phenomenally  _ terrible plan, doomed to failure in every respect, and they’d all regret trying it.

And more,  _ he’d _ regret suggesting it.

“S-1? Are you awake?”

There was no ‘would’ about it. He was already regretting this.

On the other side of the one-way glass, the little boy on a cot shifted slightly.

“S-1? Please open your eyes.” The Shinra scientist, specifically recruited and sworn to secrecy, outfitted in lab coat and clothing perfectly matching that in use in the Shinra Science Department, repeated herself. Hojo was dead and any assistants of his who’d had a hand in Project S had disappeared into the woodwork, but there was always someone. He found that out when he was the leader of Avalanche. No matter what you wanted, there was always someone willing to do it, if you knew who to ask.

And a genuine scientist, in a real lab in Shinra’s new building, would only add to the realism of what they were trying to pull.

The boy shifted uncomfortably on the cot, and opened his eyes. The scientist had been well-briefed beforehand and didn’t so much as flinch.

“Good. How do you feel.” Barret winced at the curt question, but they had picked her for her acting and her experience. Scientists who’d been in Shinra that long were hard to come by, and if her manner was authentic, it should make this believable. 

Didn’t make him like hearing someone talk that way to a kid any more though.

The boy’s mouth worked for a moment, but she didn’t offer him water. When he spoke, his soft voice was rough with sleep.

“My head hurts. And my arms and legs and body ache a bit.”

She nodded. “Anything else? Particular soreness in your fingers or toes? Any sensory abnormalities?” Before he could answer, she added “Are your hearing and vision and other senses normal.”

The child gave her an affronted look. “I know what abnormalities means.” But then he jerked his gaze down, breaking eye contact. In a much meeker tone he said “No soreness. Everything seems normal.”

The scientist didn’t respond, merely nodded. Now she moved to get him water and take a moment to rub his eyes and stretch as he woke up. It was good to see him move; proved that the sedatives they’d slipped him hadn’t done any damage. After they returned to the expedition, Barret had contacted the rest of Avalanche to decide what to do. And his own harebrained scheme was the best anyone came up with.

The boy kept his movements restrained, didn’t spread his arms out, and didn't try to get off of his cot.

“You have just finished a new test, part of your training. It was highly successful. You did well.” They’d agreed on that beforehand - hopefully being praised would make the kid more relaxed, more likely to trust them. “In this test, you were placed in a new Virtual Reality simulator and underwent a simulation of being kidnapped by a terrorist group. You performed extremely well, avoiding damage and attempting to return to Shinra. You did not reveal classified information and were overall satisfactory.” 

She gave the boy an expectant look.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“This test was the beginning of a new initiative to accustom you to the outside world. During this process, you will be moved to a new location and your testing schedule will be put on hold.” She glanced at the boy who was giving her a wide-eyed look, and broke character for a moment, smiling reassuringly at him.

But she was a professional, and it only lasted a moment. “Now, I would like you to meet someone. You may recognize him - he was an actor in your training exercise earlier.”

That was his cue. Barret squared his shoulders, straightened his shirt, and stepped into the room. The plan was to bring the kid to live with him while they tried to confirm what he was - without most of Old Shinra's equipment they didn't have the ability to test if he was a clone, a remnant, or a de-aged Sephiroth spat out by the Lifestream. Cloud was the only one who might be able to tell, and he'd started withdrawing the moment he heard about the kid, so no help there.

The boy looked up, and obviously recognized him. His eyes widened in surprise and he opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything, looking down at the floor.

“My name is Barret. I’ll be taking care of you for a while. Is that okay?”

The boy frowned, but nodded.

“I need to ask a few questions, just to get to know you.” The kid nodded again, and Barret pulled up a chair and sat down. Looming over the boy, who was still sitting on the cot, wouldn’t help with this.

“What’s your name?”

“Sephiroth.” He glanced furtively at the scientist, then added “S-1.”

“How old are you?”

“Seven. Didn’t you ask me this  _ before?” _

Barret couldn’t suppress a chuckle at the first sign of impudence he'd seen. But from the boy’s flinch and muttered apology, he should have tried harder. 

“It’s alright - I did ask this before. But I need to repeat it now. It’s, uh, procedure.”

The kid (he wasn’t going to call him Sephiroth until they were  _ sure, _ and Barret didn’t want to think about what would happen if that’s who he turned out to be. Sephiroth was a monster, even before Nibelheim, and certainly after. This was  _ just a kid. _ ) seemed to take that answer in stride.

“I’m seven.”

“What year is it?”

“1987.”

Barret didn’t let himself react. It wasn’t  _ proof, _ not yet. “Where are we?”

“In the labs, in Shinra.”

“Who do you think I am?”

The kid shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know, sir. ...Maybe you’re a Turk? Or an executive.” He cast a doubtful look at Barret’s clothes, which, to be fair, were not the sort of thing Turks or Shinra executives wore. Nicer than what he tended to wear with Avalanche, after all he had a ruse to keep up, but no fancy suit.

“Where do you live?”

“In my room. In the containment wing.”

“What  _ city? _ ”

“Oh. Midgar.”

“You mentioned a professor earlier, in the… simulation. Who did you mean?”

“Professor Hojo, sir. He’s in charge of me.”

_ Still not proof. _ Barret refused to believe this truly was Sephiroth, no matter what it looked like. And if the rest of Avalanche thought he was deluding himself about a potential threat - well. They hadn't been there when the kid nearly froze to death, or panicked at a hint of disapproval. Barret needed more information, and he could only get it through more time with the boy, unless Cloud decided to be helpful.

“Alright, kid. We’re going to, um, start the next phase of your training. You can get changed into these.” He got up and held out a bag of clothing, hastily bought on the way here, including a pair of sandals, since shoe size was even harder to guess than the rest of it.

The kid slipped off the cot, and hesitantly took the bag, keeping Barret at arm’s length. As he was reaching for the medical scrub shirt he wore, the scientist cleared her throat.

“You can change in there.” She gestured to a small side room. The boy quickly left them alone. Barret watched him go, feeling even more disturbed than before.

“Was he really expecting to just change in front of us?” Little kids didn’t feel awkward about nakedness like adults did, but seven was a bit old for that, and he and the scientist were practically strangers…

“Specimens didn’t get a lot of privacy. If he was raised in Hojo’s labs, I’m not surprised he doesn’t expect any.”

Barret gave the woman a hard look. She sounded far too cavalier about the situation.

“Is this all you needed?” She asked, apparently not noticing his anger. “Because I have an actual job, one that doesn’t require selling my soul to a madman and a megacorporation,  _ or _ just pretending to, and I need to get back to it. And I’m sure Neo-Shinra wants their lab back.”

Well, she’d done what they needed her to. This ruse might not have worked without a convincing Shinra scientist, and if they needed her to play the role again, he knew where to find her.

“That’s it; you can go.” He waited until she was almost out the door before he spoke again. “And remember - breathe a word of this, to  _ anyone _ , and Avalanche will make you regret it.” 

She nodded sharply, and was gone.

"Sir?" Barret turned to look at the boy, now dressed.

"Come on. We're heading out." Barret headed out into the halls of Neo-Shinra, glaring at anyone who looked at them. The boy followed him closely, practically jogging to keep up. Barret felt guilty for a moment, but he wanted to get out of here fast, and the kid would cope. It wasn't far.

People in the halls watched them as they passed, eyes skating over Barret with some confusion and settling onto the silver head trotting after him with outright shock. The kid kept his gaze down, looking at their surroundings only out of the corners of his eyes, following close to Barret's heels.

As they got outside, the boy hesitated, gazing upwards. Barret was halfway to his car before he noticed his shadow was missing.

Doubling back, he was about to call the kid over, but it died on his lips. 

The boy was staring at the sky like he'd never seen it before - and he hadn't, had he? His eyes were wide, the slit pupils a jarring contrast to the wonder in them, and his mouth had fallen open. Standing there, in the corporate entrance to Neo-Shinra headquarters, his ill-fitting clothes a stark contrast to the business suits of the people around him, and the look of unadulterated awe on his face, he looked like part of another world. No one with that much sincere joy at the beauty of the sky belonged anywhere near Shinra.

If anything, it reminded him of Aerith. The way she had stared at the sky when they left Midgar, and the way she never got tired of it. When she took watch at night, she would stare at the stars for hours, and when they were travelling, she never looked away from the view.

But this child wasn't looking at a beautiful sunset, or a gorgeous mountain vista, or a sparkling ocean, or any of the awe-inspiring sights Gaia had to offer. He was looking at the sky, a pale barely-blue shade from the pollution in old Midgar, half overshadowed by the structure of the pre-Meteor building that formed Shinra's headquarters. Passerby jostled him as they came and went, and he slowly came out of his trance. But he didn't follow Barret out to the car - his wide eyes filled with fear and he shrank away, stepping back inside.

"Come on, kid," Barret said gently. "We gotta go." The boy shook his head ever so slightly, as though afraid of refusing too strongly, and stayed inside.

"What's wrong? Why don't you want to?"

The kid shuddered, and clenched his fists at his sides. With an obvious effort, he stepped forward, keeping his eyes down, and moving as though he expected the ground to collapse under him at any moment but didn't have a choice about trusting his weight to it.

Of course. Aerith had hidden it, but when she first stepped out from under the plate, she'd been afraid of the sky too. And this child had lived practically his whole life indoors, without even the Midgar slums to explore.

Barret stepped forward, and crouched beside him. Waited until the boy glanced up.

"Can I pick you up?"

A tiny nod, and Barret lifted him up and began the walk to the car. The kid slowly relaxed in his arms, pressing his face into his shoulder to hide from the sky. Barret kept a hand on his back, a warm weight holding him steady.

~=~

The kid fit in. Marlene was happy to have a playmate closer to her own age, a little brother to lord it over, and the boy seemed content to follow her lead in things. They couldn’t call him by the same name as the Nightmare, so someone started referring to him as Sephy, and it stuck.

Tifa was hesitant about letting him stay at Seventh Heaven, but it was where Barret lived when he was in Edge, and the boy had to be with him. In the end, she agreed it was their best option.

And after some time around him, she warmed up. Tifa didn’t trust or forgive easily, but whatever the boy was, he wasn’t responsible for the things Sephiroth the Nightmare had done. 

Cloud wasn’t around. That wasn’t so unusual these days, but this was different. He wasn’t just running away from them, he was outright hiding. He avoided calls, he wouldn’t tell Tifa where he was, he  _ missed Denzel’s birthday… _ Cloud was trying not to be around Sephy. Barret couldn’t really blame him - with the kind of trauma in Cloud’s head, of course he’d want to stay as far away as possible - but at the same time, he resented it. Cloud was the only person with enough of a residual connection to J-Cells that he might be able to tell them what Sephy really was - a new remnant, a lost clone, some other, stranger experiment (or Sephiroth himself, using a new form of trickery to gain their trust… )

They needed to know. Because every day, it seemed more and more likely that the boy was exactly who he said he was. Sephiroth, the original, at seven years old. A child, without Jenova's influence, and missing years of Shinra's conditioning. Who played tag with Marlene, even though he could outrun her easily, and eagerly joined Tifa's martial arts lessons to the neighborhood kids. In fact, he showed no interest in swords at all. Barret wondered if he had been introduced to them at all yet. At this point, even if he had final confirmation that he was Sephiroth, Barret, wouldn't want to let him go. Not when he had finally stopped being afraid of the sky, and started coming to him with his little hurts instead of hiding them away.

So Barret asked around. Cloud must come back to Edge sometimes, even if he wouldn’t tell them when, and it was a tight-knit community. Someone had to have some idea where he was staying when he was there.

And someone did - Reeve. Of course - the head of the WRO was an old friend, so no one would think strangely of Cloud visiting. Barret would have been angry at Reeve for keeping the fact that  _ Cloud had been crashing at his place whenever he visited Edge _ a secret, but the man seemed so relieved to confess that he let it go. At least Cloud called ahead of his arrivals most of the time, so he knew he’d be there in a couple of days. 

And when Cloud arrived, two days later, he found Barret and Sephy, waiting in Reeve’s living room.

~=~

Barret crossed his arms as Cloud slammed the door. They were in what must be Reeve’s spare room - Cloud’s bedroom - and Sephy was back in the kitchen. Cloud had barely agreed to stay in the house when Barret sent the boy to another room, and even so, he was physically putting walls between them. It wasn’t even that Barret disagreed with having this conversation in private, just that he’d wanted Cloud to meet the kid first. Get an actual impression of him.

But he’d take what he could get.

“Why did you bring him here.”

“I need to know what he is. You’re the only person who could tell me,” Barret responded.

Cloud’s eyes were like chips of ice. “Didn’t you get some Old Shinra scientists to help you out with him? Can’t imagine what I’d be able to add to  _ their _ expertise.”

“You know that’s not true. And if you think I’d trust them without consulting you on something so important… “ Barret trailed off.

Cloud had turned away, pulling First Tsurugi from his back as though to set it on the stand near the wall, but not letting it go. His hand clenched on the sword’s hilt, as though itching to fight something.

“C’mon, Cloud,” Barret said softly. “Tell me what’s going on with you. You’ve been gone for months, barely called. Tifa’s hiding it, but she’s worried sick, the kids miss you so much - Denzel was heartbroken you weren’t at his birthday.” He took a deep breath. “I was worried too, and believe me, I’m furious at Reeve for keeping where you were staying a secret, but when he told me he’d seen you and you looked okay, I was ready to kiss him.” 

Cloud’s hand had stilled on the sword.

“If it’s the scientist from Old Shinra, she doesn’t know anything. Only needed her a couple times to keep up the illusion to Sephy - keep him from realizing what’s going on.”

Cloud scoffed. “If you think he doesn’t know what’s going on, you’re being an idiot, Barret.” He didn’t turn around. “Sephiroth wouldn’t be taken in with that kind of transparent prank: if he hasn’t made that known yet, it’s because he wants something.”

Barret felt a flare of annoyance at Cloud’s attitude, both towards him and the kid he’d been taking care of for the last two months, but he didn’t let it show. 

Cloud wanted to get a rise out of him. Barret wouldn’t oblige.

“So you think it’s him then.”

And now Cloud turned around. “Who else? Don’t pretend it’s not him just because he looks all sweet and innocent now. The J-cells know him, they’re calling out for Reunion as we speak.”

Barret felt a shiver go through him at those words, and at the Arctic cold in Cloud’s eyes, but he met his gaze anyway.

“You sure about that? That we’ve really got the original on our hands, not just some sort of remnant?”

“I’m sure. Sephiroth manipulated my mind and puppeted my body. I recognize him. I can feel him from a mile away, and  _ that-” _ Cloud jabbed a finger towards the door “-is him.”

“Huh.” Barret glanced over at the wall, lowering his arms and sticking his hand in a pocket. “So why’d you come here, then? If you can feel him from a mile away, why’d you even show up?”

No response.

“I mean,” Barret continued, feeling the air change in the room. “You’ve been avoiding him for months. Why’s today any different?” Cloud shuffled awkwardly in place. Barret was on the home stretch now. “It wouldn’t be that something else happened, like you got a message from the Lifestream, now would it?”

He looked back at Cloud. “Because I’ve been caring for that kid for two months Cloud, and if he’s acting I’ll eat my gatling gun. Sephiroth was a good actor, but whatever that kid is, it’s genuine.”

By now, the ice in Cloud’s eyes had melted, and Barret could see the fear and vulnerability underneath.

“The boy out there is just a kid. And if you’re sure, then it’s the kid version of Sephiroth.” Barret felt a chill at saying that name in reference to the child he’d cared for for the last two months. But not as much of one as he’d have expected, and it went away, replaced by the warmth of seeing him grow and fit in. He’d never been around a child who soaked up praise and affection as much as that boy, or who tried so hard to please the adults in his life. Or who asked, trembling and afraid, how long he would get to stay with them before his training was over and he went back to the labs. That was real, and if it was also what Sephiroth had been like as a child- Well.

Maybe sometimes people could have a second chance. 

“This morning.” Barret jerked at hearing Cloud’s voice so soft all of a sudden. “Aerith. She told me not to run away this time. That if I faced my fears, they wouldn’t be so bad for once.”

Barret nodded. “So you did get a message. Cloud, you can trust her, and you can trust me.”

Cloud took a deep breath. “I know. It’s just hard to remember that sometimes. But I’ll try.”

“Can’t ask for any more." Barret felt something loosen in his chest at the reassurance that this wasn't going to harm the Planet. "Don't suppose she told you why he's here, did she?"

"I think… she was trying to prevent him from coming back again by sending him back on her terms. Without Jenova's control of him, or the power he got from her, he's practically declawed." Cloud seemed calmer now, relaxed even, as he went on, “And you? I know you didn’t… want to think about who it was earlier.”

Barret took a moment to consider that. Cloud was right - he hadn’t wanted to think about whether that kid was actually Sephiroth. But he had to admit, he wasn’t surprised to have confirmation of it. Sephy was Sephiroth, as he had been as a child, by some mechanism of the Lifestream, and Barret was okay with that. At this point he wasn’t just Sephiroth - he was also Marlene and Denzel’s friend. He was learning martial arts from Tifa and at this rate, might never even learn to use a sword. And he was Barret’s kid. His to take care of and his to love. 

And if thinking that broke his heart a little, not for the child outside, but for Sephiroth the Calamity, or who he could have been - well, maybe this second chance would mean something for him too. One more person whose life had been ruined by Shinra, but might have a better shot in this new world of theirs.

“I want this life to be different. No repeats of last time. But, yeah. I can cope with this. Sephy’s a good kid, and we’ll make sure Shinra doesn’t grind it out of him this time.” He gave Cloud a smile. “Now do you want to come meet him properly?”

~=~

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> And if you have a minute to spare, I love feedback as much as anyone!


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